


You've Got To Be Kidding Me

by NotASpaceAlien



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: De-aging, Gen, Kids, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 16:41:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5213186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotASpaceAlien/pseuds/NotASpaceAlien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crowley's punishment from Hell isn't quite what he thought it was going to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You've Got To Be Kidding Me

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr at http://not-a-space-alien.tumblr.com/post/133240118240/i-think-ladylier-was-interested-in-seeing-this

“ _Crowley!”_

The voice screamed directly at him from his car stereo as soon as the engine died, and he jumped so much that the keys flew from his hand and onto the floor.  “Ah! Y-yes, lord?”

“We would like a word with you.  Please come to my office.”

Crowley’s pulse began to race.  “Yes, of course, Lord.”

The radio died back into static, and Crowley’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel.  This was it.  Hell was finally going to punish him for what he did during the Apocalypse.  “A word” was probably a euphemism for a number of unpleasant things that were going to happen to him down there.  They had promised as much when he had run from Hastur.

And he had just come home with a nice bottle of wine, too.

Crowley quickly slipped his mobile from his pocket and mashed Aziraphale’s number in with shaking hands.

“Come on, come on…”

“You have reached the number of…”

Crowley saw a dark portal beginning to yawn into space in front of his car as Aziraphale’s inbox message played.  As soon as his phone beeped, he rushed out, “Aziraphale, I have to go to Hell, I don’t know when I’ll be back, I’m sorry, I-I lo…I hope we can see each other again soon.”  He snapped the phone shut, tossed it on the passenger’s seat, and threw his car door open.  He stepped out, squared his shoulders, straightened his suit, and stepped into the portal with what he hoped was a confident stride.

It was darker down here, and what light did exist was an infernal red.  An occasional distant scream sounded, bouncing down the hallway, and Crowley always felt like he could faintly hear the sound of insectoid creatures scuttling just out of sight in this accursed place.

He was standing in front of a solid door, staring at the name plaque on it: 

_Dagon_

_Lord of the Files_

_Master of Madness_

_Under-Duke of the Seventh Torment_

He knocked.

“Come in!”

Crowley cracked the door open and cautiously peered inside.  Dagon was sitting in the corner, plinking away on a typewriter with his massive claws, his muscular frame ill-fitting for the small space at his desk.  “Please sit down.”

Crowley made use of the only other chair in the room; it was made out of human bones, and he could feel a vertebra poking his bottom as he did so.  “May I ask why I have been summoned, sir?”

Dagon’s clawed hands clinked on his glasses as he adjusted his frames, then went back to typing.  “You’re being reassigned.”

Crowley’s heart dropped.  “Oh,” he said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice. Still, it was better than what he had imagined he had coming to him.

The typewriter _ding_ ed, and Dagon pushed the mechanism back to start a new line. “You’re still assigned topside, though. The higher-ups just thought it would be more useful for you to change your targeting a little.”

“Oh…?”

“We have noticed you have not been making adequate progress.”  Dagon wheeled his chair around to a filing cabinet that was half his size; he delicately clawed a drawer open, banging his bovine horns on the wall in the process. He laid what he had withdrawn on the desk, and Crowley saw the reports he had been filing since the averted Apocalypse.  He had not thought anyone had actually been reading those.

“May I ask what is…erm… _inadequate…_ ”

Dagon gave him a contemptuous look.  “Crowley, removing religious iconography from _coffee cups_ is not proper demonic activity.”

“But….But the outrage generated—”

  “Crowley.”

 “Everyone is too busy focusing on the—”

 “ _Crowley._ ”

 He fell silent.  Dagon shuffled his reports.  “Management feels your talents are being misapplied.  Your work in the corruption in the garden is more along the lines of the quality we are looking for.”

 “Oh, _that…_ ”

“Yes, we want you to focus more on corrupting humans directly.  Temptation. That sort of thing.”

“Of course, sir, I can do that.”

“They, ah, think you might move your focus… _elsewhere_ , from where you have traditionally focused.”

“E-elsewhere?”

“It will be made clear soon.  It will just take a minute to properly modify your corporation.  Please step out of it.”

* * *

Aziraphale was an angel and as such, he was obligated to support traditional values, including the value of family and the importance of the youth of the nation.  However, on a personal level, he could not stand children.  They were dirty, loud, and had no respect for the delicacy of his personal belongings, or his personal space, or his person in general.

He kept a jar of sweets under the counter to hand out when children came into his shop.  He was a bit nauseous at the thought of them getting their sticky hands on his books, but with their mouths occupied they were generally much quieter. Besides, he _did_ enjoy the smile that lit up their face when they saw the candy: he always stocked the good kind.*

* * *

*Aziraphale knew what the good kind was because he ate more of the candy than the children that came into his shop, and thus was somewhat of an expert.  


* * *

So when he saw a head of dark hair bobbing at waist height in the shop, he bent down and lifted the lid of the jar, crinkling the wrappers as he fished around.

“Young man,” he said, re-emerging with a red and white striped globule.  “I’ll have you know the books must not be touched with dirty hands, but if you promise to be careful I-”

He stopped when he looked down at the child and made eye contact with a pair of golden discs, slit pupils boring into him.  “Hello, angel,” said a small, high voice.

Aziraphale clapped his hand over his mouth, his body beginning to wrack with laughter.

Crowley’s bony face flushed red.  “Stop it. It’s not funny.”

“Cr-Crowley, you-” Aziraphale stopped to let out a howl, then wiped his eyes.  “I’m sorry, dear boy, I just—Dear _boy_ —oh, oh my, ahahaha.”

“It’s not _funny!_ Stop laughing!”

“It is a little funny.”

“It’s not!”

“Oh, Crowley, I’m sorry, you just took me by surprise, that’s all.  I’ve never seen you in that…particular shape before.”

Crowley looked morosely down at his body, which was dressed in jean shorts and a striped shirt fit for a boy playing in a sandbox in a comic strip.  “I’ve never _been_ this shape before.  I tried to tell them I wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything like this, but they insisted I could get much more done if I started corrupting humans early, focusing on the nation’s youth.”

“Oh, Crowley…” Another giggle.

Crowley had _wanted_ to tell them that as a kid, he couldn’t do any of the really important stuff he needed to do: drink, drive his Bentley, go to fancy restaurants.  He suspected they would not have looked very kindly on finding out those were his priorities, however. 

“This has _got_ to be some sort of joke,” said Crowley.  “They’re doing this to punish me for disobeying. It has to be something like that. They’re probably getting a really good laugh out of this.”

“Whatever are you going to do?”

“Well….I suppose I could try corrupting a few youths…”

“You’ll do no such thing!” said Aziraphale, and Crowley gave a small yelp as he pulled his ear.  “Or you’ll be sent to bed without supper.”

“Aziraphale!” he wailed. “Quit it!”

The angel suppressed another laugh.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  Here, young man.”  He nudged the piece of candy towards him.

Crowley’s face contorted into a look of anger, and he whirled around and stomped out, the untied laces of his tennis shoes flying everywhere as he did so.  A moment later, he paused, and snatched the candy off the counter, before continuing his exit. 

* * *

Aziraphale was still thinking about the encounter hours later.  It was that amusing to him.  He was not quite as amused, however, when he found a sparkling white letter with a gold embossed seal siting on his desk, and knew it as a correspondence from Heaven.

                _Aziraphale,_

_It has come to our attention that your nemesis has switched up his strategies, but you have not made any attempt to accommodate these changes. Please report for a brief tactical meeting, and we can change your corporation in an appropriate manner._

_-Gabriel_

 

_Bugger._

* * *

Crowley didn’t like this, not one bit.  You couldn’t be _cool_ as a kid.  Well, you could be a _cool kid._  But you were still just a kid, and kids just weren’t on the same level of coolness as an adult.

He couldn’t go back to his apartment like this.  His neighbors would ask questions.  Who was going to water his plants, and properly threaten them?

And he _was_ a _kid._ Or a _child._  He couldn’t even properly be called a _young adult_ in this body.  He would need a stepstool to reach anything.  Nobody would take him seriously or be properly afraid of him. They thought he was _cute._  Everybody was constantly asking him where his parents were and being concerned that he was unsupervised.  It wasn’t proper at all.

It wasn’t all bad, though. Humans were inclined to give him sweets, he noticed.  Though it didn’t quite make up for his sudden inability to buy alcohol.

He decided to start some low-level mischief at the corner store and shoplift a candy bar.  That went off without a hitch, and he sat eating it on a low stone wall by a stranger’s house, being sure to stay in sight of a few children playing nearby.  What he really wanted to be eating was an apple.  It seemed fitting, his being the Tempter and all that, but he didn’t want to promote healthy eating habits.

The children took no notice of him, so he went back to the store and shoplifted a pack of gum, which seemed like a bad enough thing to do.  To really spice it up, he chewed a piece and stuck it in the hair of the girl in the yard.  Her brother hit him then, so he gave up trying to corrupt them.

He wandered over to the local elementary school during recess and wiggled under the fence to join the other kids.  This proved to be a bad idea.  There is a great variation in size amongst human children in early schooling, and Crowley was the size of some of the younger children there, and the older children who were mixed in shoved him to the pavement when he tried to join their group. Of course he couldn’t do anything _supernatural_ to retaliate, because his aggressor was a damned _kid._  But he couldn’t do anything _natural_ , either, because _he_ was also a damned kid, and he ended up getting his hair pulled and his arm twisted when he tried to incite the children to disobey the teacher, stay out past the bell, take an extra chocolate milk, or neglect their homework.

He decided to try and advance the work of Hell with more chewed up gum.  He nabbed another pack from the corner store** and made his way back towards the school, hands in his pockets, chewing loudly.  

* * *

**By now they were beginning to notice that their supplies of gum and candy were running low

* * *

He reached the yard and got the attention of a group of girls playing with trucks.

“What do _you_ want?” said a little girl, wrinkling her nose at him.

“Erm…” he said.

“Hey!” said a voice from behind him, and Crowley turned to see a boy toddling towards him, an angry look on his face.  “I certainly hope you’re not planning on doing anything _illicit_ here, you old serpent.”

Crowley stared at the other boy, dumbfounded, then broke into hysterical laughter.  “ _Aziraphale?_  Oh my g- Oh, _somebody_.”

Aziraphale chubby cheeks turned red.  “Stop it, this is serious, Crowley.  I mean it. Stay away from them.”

“You—you—ahahahaah—” 

“It’s not _that_ funny, Crowley.  You look a great deal sillier than I do.”

“ _Sillier?_  Angel, I’m laughing because you look the same!”

“The same?”

“You’re just a shrunk down version of your adult body!”

Aziraphale looked offended. “I am not!”

“Yes you are!”

“I—That is simply not true! This body has different proportions—and baby fat around the waist, perhaps, and—”

“That’s not _baby fat,_ Aziraphale, it’s just _fat._ You’re _fat._  You’re a fat adult and you’re an equally fat kid.”

“Crowley!” said Aziraphale, his lip beginning to quaver.  “I don’t see why—why you have to be so—”

“Oh, no.  Hey, I didn’t mean—”

“You don’t have to be so _mean!_  I _tried_ telling them I could thwart you much better in an adult body, but they just didn’t _understand_.  I don’t _like_ it, Crowley, I can’t do _anything_ like this, and you come along and start calling me _fat,_ and I don’t like it.”

“Hey, I’m sorry,” said Crowley, moving towards him.

Aziraphale reached out one hand and slapped Crowley, and the demon was so shocked that he stumbled back, his eyes wide.

“You _hit_ me.”

Aziraphale’s eyes were watering, his face scrunched up, still glaring at Crowley.

The demon stepped forwards and slapped Aziraphale back.

And then they were struggling against each other, muttering deep curses at each other in their high voices, their soft, round hands not doing much to each other as they engaged in a poor simulacrum of a fistfight, pulling each other’s hair, stepping on each other’s feet, biting, and yelling at each other to _stop it!  Stop!  I hate you!_

Finally, Aziraphale, who was a bit larger, reached out and shoved Crowley to get him off, and the demon, who had not thought Aziraphale could possibly be capable of such vicious violence, was so surprised that he fell directly on his backside.

Now, it should be noted that small backsides are significantly more sensitive than adult backsides;*** this has been proven scientifically.  Crowley had fallen on his backside many times as an adult demon, but as a child-shaped being, it was a first for him, and the feeling of his tailbone hitting the ground had a smaller area to be distributed over, and was thus more intense.  His vision wavered, and he told himself he wasn’t going to cry, but then he did.  He buried his face in his hands and wailed, because it hurt, and everything was _hard_ and he was so _small._  Aziraphale’s tears finally began to overflow the brim of his eyes, too, and he sunk down onto the ground beside him, and the two just sat there on the pavement, crying the tears of two children whose feelings and small bodies had been hurt.

* * *

***Evidence for this can be found in the fact that children are spanked as a punishment, whereas adults generally do it for fun.

* * *

A teacher nearby, who had observed this tiny fistfight, ran over and pulled the two boys up.  Neither of them took much notice, continuing to cry, and as she comforted them and cooed at them that it was okay, she was just trying to figure out _whose_ children these were, because she had never seen them in the school before. She knew what her first priority ought to be, though; she took them both inside and got Crowley a Band-Aid for the scrape on his knee, and Aziraphale for the cut on his knuckle, and then gave them both a cookie and a juicebox.  By then they were done crying, their ills forgotten, and as they nibbled on their snack and had their heads patted both of them were thinking that maybe being a kid might not be such a bad thing after all.


End file.
